Dem was long dead. Dead for years and years. She herself was seventy-four. If he’d lived, he would have been eighty-eight. The Stage Neck now employed a female bartender, who therefore undoubtedly worried less about the mental state of other women. She picked up a crumpled bag in the road. Any car turning onto the street might be Terry in his rental car, which might be either white or red, as rental cars tended to be. All other cars were silver.
How had she ended up here? She was a Virginia girl. Virginia, where spring came a month and a half earlier than it did in southern Maine. In Virginia the problem was bees. In Maine, blackflies and mosquitoes. Well — the problem with bees now was that they were dying. It was a very bad situation. One Dem would have worried about incessantly, pointing out every terrible thing that would arise due to the death of the bees. He would have made photographs of dead bees, and eventually — when the moon no longer appeared at night, or something equally dire — his photographs would be shown at MoMA. Eventually one would be sold at auction in New York City and a framed print of a dead bee would be hung above the marble-topped table of a discerning, socially correct, environmentally anxious couple in Park Slope, so they’d have an expensive little altar of sadness, the photograph taking the place of Christ on the cross, the table an old-fashioned, humble altar that sometimes might feature the perfect still life of our times (of course minus flowers or fruit): a key ring and a Binky and a bottle of Klonopin and an unopened Dasani water.
Red. An unpleasant maroon shade, like menstrual blood. Better, though, than a screaming fire-engine red. So many things going on in the car: a wave; a hand flipping the sun visor back into place; the side window rolling down, then rising again, finally all the way down to allow for an awkward first handshake. Terry wore rectangular glasses with heavy black frames that magnified his eyes and called attention to his facial asymmetry, one eye larger than the other. Brown eyes. Slightly thinning brown hair. Nervous hands: smoothing his hair, dropping the keys, snatching them up again, a sort of stammering dance in the driveway as he wondered aloud about locking the car. He reached back in for his notebook and cell phone, which he slid into the pocket of his sports coat.
She preceded him up the walkway, not wide enough for two at a time (one of Dem’s complaints). She imagined that Terry, behind her, was sneaking a last, quick look at the phone. A robin hopped across the lawn. There was a nest in the climbing rose.
“I confess, I’ve already been to Dockside,” he said. “This is no way for us to begin, but I’ve just been through the most awful couple of days, and to be honest, my goddaughter’s with me. At Dockside. I found out when I called for a lunch reservation that they rent rooms. She won’t join us for lunch, of course, but she’s there because… well, because her mother is acting far worse than Hannah, she has a frightful temper when things don’t go her way. I do apologize for bursting out with what’s troubling me, but it’s left me quite disoriented, really.”
She poured him a glass of Perrier. She poured one for herself. He didn’t seem in any shape to question about ice or no ice, so she held out the glass. “What’s happened?” she said. She’d feared he’d be some somber academician, but she suddenly realized that there was no reason to assume he taught. He was certainly voluble. Nothing to worry about there. A man Dem would have taken to instantly. When he was alive, she resisted his spontaneously formed likes and dislikes. Now that he was dead, she channeled his opinions.
“Leigh’s inability to have any empathy whatsoever is hardly helpful in a bad situation. I’m so sorry. Of course you don’t even know these people…”
Water wet his chin, he’d taken such a big gulp. He sat at the kitchen table without asking if he might. Which was fine. It was a little chilly on the back porch. There was a space heater, but she suddenly felt embarrassed that he might know she sat on the porch with a heater aimed at her. She pulled out a chair and sat across from him. She said, “I must admit, you’ve got me very interested.”
“She hasn’t graduated, is the thing. What I don’t understand is that this failure to graduate came as no surprise to her, but why she let her mother and father arrange a celebration and book two rooms — Rand came from San Francisco with his girlfriend. Why Hannah didn’t say something beforehand, I don’t understand, though now she tells me they’re intimidating. That her father roars at her. That was her exact word. Not the stereotype of someone who lives in San Francisco, is it? I understand that Leigh can be quite bullish. It’s a crisis of some sort, that’s obvious, and at the college there was absolutely no one to see about it. The dean couldn’t meet with them at all yesterday because of her responsibilities at graduation. What we were all expected to do, other than sitting around the motel, I can’t imagine. There was only one blessed time-out when everyone agreed not to discuss it and we had gelato. It was over in twenty minutes, then the accusations started again and the tears. Hannah seemed to have calmed down by the time she and I left. There’s a boyfriend who’s coming for her tonight, on the bus from Boston. He’s premed. I’m awfully sorry to be dumping all this in your lap. I really must shut up.”
“Not on my account. I don’t get many visitors, let alone people who are caught up in a great drama. All I understand so far, though, is that for some reason this young woman didn’t graduate.”
“She didn’t take any of her final exams! You’d think they’d get in touch with her, see if there was some reason for it. Maybe they did try to contact her. I don’t know. She called this Boston fellow her fiancé and Leigh acted like she’d said ‘my shaman’ or something. What if he is? Her fiancé, I mean. Not that I have the slightest idea what that would have to do with her not finishing her work.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“I don’t know his name. I’ve never met anyone she’s dated. She keeps that information top secret. You try to listen, to let them talk about what they’re inclined to talk about, isn’t that right? What do I know? I’m not a father.”
“I’m not a mother, so I’m not the best person to give advice.”
“I don’t quite know how to handle it. Not that I know what ‘it’ is, if you’ll excuse me for sounding like Bill Clinton. Leigh went absolutely berserk, pointing her finger at me, saying, ‘You’re so sympathetic, you figure this out, you support her so I’m not working two jobs.’ She was exaggerating there. She has one part-time job, and I know for a fact that Rand gave her a very nice financial settlement. If she thinks of her volunteer work as a job, I suppose that’s fair enough, but money’s not a problem. Actually, she may have been a bit unnerved from the moment she met Rand’s girlfriend, who plays with the San Francisco symphony. These aren’t inherently strange people, a musician and a medical student. I do agree with Hannah that in this circumstance, Leigh’s temper was quite terrible.”